Scourge of War is a good series.
i have both the Gettysburg (American Civil War Version/expansions) as well as the base Waterloo (Napoleanic) version.
Played a lot of SoW:Gettysburg solo as well as some MP games with a small group of players.
There is (or at least was when I last checked) a group of US based players that played MP every afternoon/evening, and some European based players that had MP sessions on weekends.

True, vodka rations may give a 30% penalty for precision, but vodka rations also gives a 30% bonus to crew/health.
Men who are already pickled in vodka will not realize they are hurt (or even dead) and will continue fighting.

Presumably if you still have a set of forged papers left (on either of the two existing servers) this would allow you to move to another nation.
If you don't have any forged papers left (I have not played much recently so I think I have at least one set on each server) then maybe as part of this server merger the developers will grant one more set of forged papers to everyone so that they can roll to the nation of their choice.

For how many decades did the Soviet (Red Army i believe) hockey team dominate Olympic hockey (IIRC, they (Soviets or "Unified Team) won it 8 out of 10 consecutive Olympic hockey championships between 1960-1992)? Those teams were essentially pro players, while other countries were forced to field amateur teams, yet people still watched.

The lower BR is to force a team to vary its fleet makeup.
i think the last thing that anyone wants to see is a 3 v 3 battle made up of a monochrome fleet.
Such a BR limit forces a varied fleet makeup and also forces a team to adjust its tactics accordingly. You can't just sail broadside to broadside when you and your oppoennents have ships with varying capabilities.
IIRC, The 3v3 tournament that happened last year had a BR limit of 450.

From reading the Patrick O;Brian and Dewey Lambdin novels my impression of peace time was that frigate captains sat around at half pay. They were a nuisance to their wives....they went to the Admiralty office every few weeks looking for work, then they came back home and pestered their wives again. Their highlight was when war finally broke out again.
Fun times I'm sure.

Sorry, I don't live in Europe.
The idea that an entire continent (Europe) takes its vacation(summer/holiday) at the same time is not something that I am used to. Who does the work while you are all gone?

Ok, then EUROS.
I just logged into the EU Server. It is 21:00 server time...the tail end of Euro prime time.
What do I see?
(no port battles contested, no port battles scheduled, and only 2 ports on the map have more than 10% hostility generated).
So what are all these Euros who choose to play on the EU server doing (if they are not fighting port battles, not creating port battles, and few generating hostility)?

Koltes, if I understand you correctly, you are arguing for a 6 hour period during which the attacker cannot do a port battle. The thing is, to the Dane/Norge, Swede, Spanish E U players, anything outside of THEIR 5 or 6 hour primetime is considered a "nightflip". They want 18 hours during which there can be no PBs. That is what they have now on the EU server.

This would certainly be useful but we must remember that this would all be on the "honors" system. There is no in game mechanic to enforce things like "NAP/Trade - ANY MILITARY SHIP IS ENGAGEABLE" or "ALLY - NO SHIPS ARE ENGAGEABLE in any waters".
Uninformed players will do what they do, and some solo privateers choose not to observe the pleasantries of these arrangements since they are looking for PvP and may not care about RvR or diplomatic arrangements.